Monday 30 March 2015





RAMBLING STAR


Between two dark-crimson moons –
One in the middle of night, another in early morn,
I’m a tipsy star caught rambling on heaven’s floor,
In love with wet clouds that drive me here and there
Falling into the abyss and rising again,
With the Sun of hope
Lurking at my thin, transparent, fragile door;

Not sure if the blue petals of sky will close me in
To a tight hug of their exuding aroma to publish my light
Into million prints in hearts of the Earth looking up me to sight,
I’m a tipsy star caught in clouds in a lonely fight
When my fellow stars watch and enjoy infringement
Of all my divine birth right
To love, to blush, to dream, to fantasize
To moan, to mourn and murmur about lost dreams
And again dream anew,
To be caressed by parrots aching to speak
In language of my heart;

I’m a tipsy star in love with self
Falling and then rising to make my new start !


Copy right : saroj k. padhi 12/03/15






VORTEX


The petals of your soul open
Like plumes of a colourful bird
Where I sit like a drop from a stray drizzle
In wait for salvation to a bard—

Caught in the vortex of conflicting tides
Of inescapable emotion ;
Raised by infinite stretch of a virile imagination,
On the wings of a wind blowing
From your love’s sweet reflection ;

I know I will dry up soon
Like desires getting fulfilled slowly in heart
Of a morning forest under a penetrating Sun--
To beam with handfuls of rays dancing
On  each leaf waiting  for the celestial fun

To merge, to mingle and mesmerize the self
Before vanishing into the glory of ether
Without the burden of worries or agonies
And burning without the slightest dither ;

But before that let me be the author
Of the lines of my own redeeming prayer,
In a language common to all mortals
In its depth, beauty and eternal glare .


@copy right: saroj k. padhi/ 13/03/15






ACID ATTACK


Your acid no doubt has burnt my body, my soft skin
But my tormented flesh has tautened my resolve
To fight for my right and bring to life better sheen
In halo of love by selves that around me revolve --

With a desire to change the mindset behind attack;
Love forced is not love, not even a shadow of love ;
For lovers true have died in remorse or at a bivouac ,
But dared not force, knowing it drizzles from above ;

How could you think that you will rob my freedom
By such dastardly act of spraying hate across a sky?--
That must be burning you inside with a big, big why
Which you may not show but to self how can you lie ?

Believe me, one day you will drink that acid you threw
With your bitter self under burns from hates of acid dew.


Comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi/ 13/03/15







RIVER  OF LOVE


As I slowly drown into the deep chasm
Under the waters of your intense love ,
All my tears of bursting agony are gone
Into the depths of your devouring soul ,
When the half moon of my memories
Floats on the surface your azure body
Like flotsam of my sad, lost, lonely being
Battered in battle with Time’s harsh sling.


Even your last hand-written love letter
Is marooned in the island of my ever increasing amnesia
Sulking like a lost baby in dark corner of a fair,
When the words of my elegy jump off the last floor
Of the skyscraper of your ambition to the fatal ground
Of my blatant fall, with a desire to open a new door;

Let there be not a slightest remnant of my lost body
Anywhere in this world so occupied with things other than love
Let me sink into a silent oblivion of your devouring passion
Like a trapped, voiceless, sinking, brooding  dove .



@copy right: saroj k. padhi
14/03/15






MIDNIGHT  LOVE


Nerves crack into chasms wider as emotions get tougher , tenser
Under the burden of proof, demanded by Time’s suspicious eye ,
Seeking  greater profusion of flowing tears in voice growing louder
When you soak my silent agonized cries into smiles on cheeks shy ;

I know you will come in my dreams dangling the bait of your body
To drowse the pangs of my soul in the transitions of my midnight,
When the sky would be bare-chested, blue like my lone, lost desire,
With smokes of empty words, deferred promises, to set things right ;

How oft’  have I resolved not to think of you in hours of loneliness
I don’t remember, but now I find that you’re a miniscule of myself
Entranced with life in its many coloured splendour and sweetness
Lying at the root of all tragic experiences inside depth of my delf ;

Come Love, let’s make a pact with this midnight moon in our midst,
To offer blend of half agony and half ecstasy as cocktail for our tryst .



@ comp. n copy right : saroj k. padhi---15/03/15









IN BETWEEN


You are a dream
Caught between an instinctive desire to possess
And my  conscious struggle for complete detachment,
Miles away from the past sheen of our love
And its present fear of a tantalizing sin ;
Trembling like a tremulous Sun on lips of leaves newly born
To speak of the mystery of an inspired new morn
Inside their lungs’ eloquent swells ,
Where desire silently dwells
Like a drunken wind that nestles
In the nest of my swinging thoughts ,
In connivance with wet clouds to end Earth’s droughts
In sprawling deserts of teeming denizens’ unconcern
Where flowers of my longings turn into spikes and stunted thorn.

As I stretch out my hands to catch handfuls of spaces
From the magnanimous blue immensities of your soul
My mind catches fire even during fall of incessant rain
Dousing my  incomplete being with its limitless  pain ;

Why am I interspersed so like a hunger in between
A desiring heart and a deterring mind
An ever expanding image of an idea unfulfilled
And yet so sweet in its agonizing grind ;

I crave, I crawl ; I coo , I call ; I rise, I fall…
Yet I  love to rise again like a robotic doll .


@copyright : saroj k. padhi 16/03/ 15





LISTENING TO DARKNESS


I listen to whispers from lips of darkness
Speaking in a language replete with alphabets
Of your secret dreams to inhabit forever the terrace of my mind
That smacks of the stolen moments of our togetherness ingrained
In the oozings from crushed leaves inside your hands
That fidgeted in the forbidden garden of our sinking lands
Waiting to merge soon into sands of oblivion ;

One where you dwell with shadows of familiar bodies
Waiting to be buried in the grave of Time’s cruel fun ;
And the other one to which I think I belong
Living a life in gay abandon, when I decay like a dead fern
In tune with night wind’s mournful song ;

Darkness wins me back to a peace
That light hardly finds ,
Darkness seals me into a box of memories
Making me enjoy its ceaseless loving grinds .


Copy right : saroj k. padhi/ 18/ 03/15









 A HOT NOON


Memory is a crippled bird wingless ,
Disabled for any flight ,
Softly cooing in corner of a tree
Like a stuck- up torn kite ,
Sulking in sad voice of a noon wind
Away from common sight .

Your jasmine body drenched by rain
From yester night’s sky is formless now
In the heat of smokes rising from lightly wet sands ,
Heating up in the dead bank of our river ,
Lost to obliterating strokes of times ;
Making it quite difficult for me to restore
Your aroma and form  in nuances of my rhymes .

I’m a dot in the outlines of your thoughts
Transpiring thro’ pores of your wrinkled spirit
That pines for salvation in the folds of old desires
Shrinking and then withering
Like petals under this noon, blistering ;
And I seething like an embattled desire
In the womb of fallen mire,
Writhing like an insect
For redemption in the dark web of a noon fire .


@ copy right : saroj k. padhi/ 19/03/15






SPRING TOUCH !


How much didn’t I wait for your Spring touch
In the Winter of my frostbitten mind
Clamouring for a sheer look at the Sun setting--
Your waist long flowing locks behind ?

But you hardly bothered to look back at the smokes rising
From a transpiring heart caught in a disaster of burning
In a Spring morning
When Winter rules here in the garden of cold hearts
Still slumbering as if in a daze after the cyclone’s brats
Left them dying speedily like trees hit by lightning  !

You are so systematic and sincere Love
In your insistent infliction of woes so enchanting !
Your tortures so long lasting !
I have no other option but to awe and wonder
At the beauty of your killing
That leaves me for ever pining for more and more of your cruelty
So lovingly familiar and satisfying !


@Copy right : saroj k. padhi/ 22. 03.15






ABSENCE



Pigeons jump on the grass field
Engrossed in their picking worms under a warm Sun
Like words on a green page in the eyes of Dyslexia ,
When you appear with your intense invisible presence
On my white page like the deep scar of a black aporia,
Untying riddles about my secret love of the infinite sky
That stretches out beyond the reach of rustling trees
Like an inexhaustible enigma of an ambiguous  silence ;
As I pretend reconciling myself to a life in your absence .

The distant swaying banana leaves unfurl
The mystery about your secret love of my agonized heart
Like pages of a romantic novel turned one after the other
In the white heat of engagement with unknown shivers
In the depth of my soul
Craving for your surrogate presence !


@ copy right : saroj k. padhi, 23/03/15





                SHADOWS



Fairies in flight drop shadows of lovers on my street
Who get drunk enough with wind to move their feet,
And squat down to listen to a song from a night bird
That has lost its way back home and intends to be heard;
When leaves are driven out of their stay in half lit pits
Like torn letters of love where scattered memory sits;

Rapt the trees listen to the echo of voices of solitary beings
That pass along the street, pulling at their hearts’ taut strings ;
To remind us of the Evening Star that grew so much stunted
After years of chase behind a proud Moon who got violated
By a casual Sun , to bleed and let souls bleed like flowers wounded ;

The Moon peeps from the chinks in wall of the bi-coloured Sky
When the giant lizard of a trailing black cloud darts by
Devouring the Moon and the Star
As the fairies keep looking at this cosmic event
From the doors of heaven flung ajar;

Making us realize the frailty of human love
Turning fleshes into shadows
That are rocked like cradles by hands from invisible above .



@Saroj k. padhi / 30.3.15


Saturday 28 March 2015





MURMURING MEMORIES


Memories stick like fresh jackfruit gum
To my soft skin till the oil of dispassion
Soaks in, to help rob off desires glum
Squatting at roots of hairs’ passion ;

When the beauty of the morning entices
Me away into familiar nests of illusion,
Where birds of love roost during storm
Making me forget all renewed affection
Of many old  names :
The road in front of your old hostel  
Where I wander like a persistent shadow
Refusing to move across Time ;
Rather being driven along like an eternal dry leaf in wind
In search of its raw colours in shades of bright green.

You smile from the cheeks of million leaves
In the crazed look of pretty flowers ,
Writing the song of salvation in the wind
As the murmur of memories merges into a silence
Of a lonely kind, into deep roots of a brooding mind .



@copy right : Saroj k. Padhi, 29/03/15

Friday 27 March 2015




FREEDOM


The wind feels free today to speak
In the language of my heart vaulting with emotions
That tide over old passions reeking of death ;
To sing of liberty of imagination to build
Nests, may be with thousand imperfections ,
To sway even in storm with simple faith .

Why should someone stop me as I wander
In the star-lit sky searching for beloved’s letters soaked in tears
That fell into the breast of compassionate God long back
Storming the clouds to break heads on mountain tops
With no stops till the sky turned red
With oozings from clotted wounds  of black letters ?

The wind of my spirit is crazy today
Brushing its invisible body on green skin of leaves
That radiate streams of light behind those mountains
Soaked in our love to awake to dreams of such lovely beams !

Today I feel that I ‘m free to steal drops of dew from lips
Of my Love when she is into a slumber too deep for any call ;
I feel too that I’m free to fall
After every rise however big or small,
Free to wander, rest, fly or crawl !

@ copy right : saroj k. padhi 27/03/15




Wednesday 25 March 2015




         AVIAN  ANGELS


As the avian angels swerve past me
In dawn’s twilight to shock me with delight
I suffer from a temporary fright ;
But alas ! The grains I scattered on my roof
 Miss their loving , penetrating sight ;
For the flurry of their excited wings scatter
Pearls of misty blinding dreams
That overshadow the Earth
Making them revel as they fly
In thoughts of yester  night
With its dizzy Romantic height--

On  the smooth glade in the jungle
Where their great grand parents danced
With the sweet children of their nocturnal desires
In the halo of thin streaks  of sun light
Streaming in thro’ dense foliage
Awaking the forest to the bliss of dawn’s
Elevating delight.

Look how hastily does the whitish Moon slowly alight
From the steep steps of the sky
To watch, and then dance away with clouds
Into a new sky strewn with petals of roses
Burning all bright !

@ copy right : saroj k. padhi 25/03/15


Monday 23 March 2015





FICTION : FEMALE   FRENEMIES :
------------------------------
(Part—1)
Dark Dawn
---------------
There was a strange palpitation in his heart. In last so many years he had never
felt like this in his habitual company of loneliness.  A shooting star crossed the
 sky of his heart reminding him of  the moments of passion  lost into the ripples
of the river Mahanadi . It was a morning . Some lightly dark clouds came floating
in  to shadow the silhouette moon in a moment . She sat beside him on a piece
 of rock on the bank dangling her bare feet into the waters of the river
narrating her dilemma, “Do you know, Saroj I’m really torn between my love for
you and my proposed marriage with Manmath Panigrahi. You know I can’t live
without you but I also don’t know how to get away from the snare of my
involvement with him…do you understand ? “
Her tongue was getting choked as she spoke.
Saroj kept imagining many moments of objectionable intimacy between the two
as he kept looking deep into her eyes shedding drops of warm tears.The river
looked at her in amazement .Then he took her  right hand into his fold of his
palms, kissed them and said, “Don’t …please don’t cry…I’m ready for all
consequences.”But as he was saying this his hands were getting moist with
 droplets of sweat dripping from depths of the pores of an anguished skin where
her palm’s maroon mehendi was taking on a red color .The rose that sprouted
long back in the garden of his heart shrugged its petals to look at the chemistry
of love weaving mysterious beats in two hearts into a bead of an invisible rosary
with silent chants of a divine feeling of togetherness at a secret place…for rarely
had they such opportunity to meet . Slowly the dawn darked with a few drops
of drizzle awaking the two souls to rise above the material body into feelings of
strange love in the soul of rain drenching them .

They sat on in spite of rain, rather with rain. Saroj was picking pearls of those
moments of intimacy  from her tears they had a few months back in the
courtyard of Leena’s house under a full moon. Leena sat shivering somewhat
amazed, wondering at the reason behind her tears.And the great river kept
 flowing with drops of rain and droplets of tears mingling into the giant flow…

(to be continued…)


@ copy right : saroj k. padhi 

Wednesday 11 March 2015









BEGUILED


I’m in love with such beautiful Evenings on run
That pass thro’ uncertain nights of casual love with moon,
Sometimes ending up with vermilion of Sun
On their foreheads, acquiring new recognition all so soon;

Here images of trees in the pool are more real
Than promises made by creatures of flesh and blood,
For they keep on constantly trying to sip in the depth of pool
When Evenings change their nature of human blood;

Images merge into the sky despite the layer of moss
On surface of pool’s water cooling anarchy of passion in wind,
When Evenings are restless like insecure stars at loss
Of wit, in face of temptations made by false suns at the hind ;

O God why do you put man in such situations of beguiling mid air
Forcing him to sway like a hopeless plantain leaf under Sun’s ire !


@ copy right : saroj k. padhi/ 10.03.15








DREAMING PALASH



Ripples in the river freak out in wind multiplying ,
Filling in the blues in my mind with beauty of waters
Rare like blue moon in a placid March morning ,
Lost into her joys of giving the peace that she offers ;

As I sit waiting for you in the labyrinths of my desire
Hangovers of dilemmas familiar still haunt faintly ,
When squirrels rush out of tree tops with tails flicking,
Their excited chittering merging into waves so lovely ;

White butterflies flit across carrying the glory of a Sun
With loads of grains of dreams on their wings shining
Like the lost stars that were so bewitching but gone ,
And the luscious young mangoes in love cutely smiling ;

Don’t touch me for I’m now a red Palash in bloom
Waiting for beaks of Spring for an end to my gloom .

@copy right : saroj k. padhi 11/03/15
            








Monday 9 March 2015







SEARCHING OUTSIDE

Mother :
Severed from the umbilical cord
I was flung into arms of many foster mothers
but none was like you
in their kisses, cuddles, smiles and tears,
love and fears ;
in my reflections and recollections
awe and wonder
I love the Goddess in you.

First love:

Away from your arms , my Love
I was wooed by many
but none was like you-
in their sweetness or saltiness,
anger or shyness,
in tantalizing closeness or pining distances,
or in the taste of their honeyed dew,
you were you
and in spite of not being with you
I love the Goddess in you.

Goddess:
Don’t know why I’m always in search of you
in my relations with the ‘other’
knowing pretty well
that the ideal can never be real-
a secret search for you silently smothers
and the debilitating man in me whimpers
at last to drop perhaps
into a singing swan’s falling feathers .

@ copy right : saroj k. padhi /8.03.15